CHANGE OR HOMEOSTASIS? A SYSTEMS THEORY APPROACH TO
DEPRESSION
Summary
Looking at the onset of depressive states in linear
terms, there is often a
problem of distinguishing cause and effect: did the adverse life events cause the depression, or did the depression
cause the adverse life events? If we
abandon linear thinking and look at depression in systemic terms, the problem of cause
and effect disappears, but it is replaced by another problem:
is the patient/environment system characterised by homeostasis or change?
Some depressed patients seem to be spiralling down towards disaster. Others seem to be stuck in a
rut. In systems terms, can
depression be at the same time an agent of change and an agent of
stasis (or even homeostasis)? The paradox can be resolved if we postulate that the function of
depression is to reconcile the individual to a subordinate social role;
depression which reconciles to a pre-existing subordinate position has static properties; depression which mediates a switch to a subordinate position from a previously
dominant position has properties of
systemic change.
In formulating a depressive state, it is sometimes
difficult to unravel
cause and effect. Is this man depressed because he lost his job,
or did he lose
his job because he was depressed? Is
this woman depressed because her husband left her, or did her husband
leave her because she was depressed and
therefore unrewarding? Some of the
causation of depression can be attributed to life events (Paykel, 1978) or social factors (Brown, 1989), but the larger part of the causation remains
unaccountable for in these terms.
One way out
of this difficulty is to adopt a systemic epistemology, in which linear relations of cause and
effect are less important than
interactive processes. Attempts to apply systems theory to psychiatry have been sporadic (Wender, 1968; Gray
et al., 1969; Senay, 1973; Marmor,
1983) except for systemic family therapy
which is explicitly based on systems
theory (Hoffman, 1981). Outcomes such as depression are seen as the endpoints of positive feedback processes
(Feldman, 1976), in which small random
deviations from a steady state are amplified progressively until the system changes and an "event" or a
"condition" is said to occur. Alternatively, random and other
deviations from the steady state may be damped by buffering or by negative
feedback, so that an outcome in the form
of a change in the system is avoided (Gray et al., 1969).
Positive feedback loops in depression
At the intrapsychic level,
depressed people have a negative view of the world and themselves (Beck, 1976),
which is in turn depressing (Teasdale, 1985). They selectively recall unfavourable
events from the past. They
tend to attribute aversive life events to internal, stable,
global causes; and they attribute
success to external, unstable or specific causes. They blame themselves when things go wrong,
but they do not take the credit when
things go right. Thus the attributional style
which results from the
depression leads to more depression ((Brewin,
1988). Along similar lines,
Pyszczynski and Greenberg (1987) found
that depressed patients focussed on
themselves after a negative outcome but avoided self-focus after a
positive outcome, so intensifying
failure and minimising success.
At the musculo-skeletal level, depression may be associated with
loss of poise
and disorders of both posture and gait (Sloman et al., 1982) of which the subjective experience may be depressing
and which may lead to aversive
reactions from others. There may also be pain,
which is not only
depressing in itself but may also give rise to ideas of serious
malfunction and disease. There may be a
sense of exhaustion, and easy fatiguability of muscles, leading
to beliefs about chronic viral infection. In general, the body does not seem to be working well
in depression, and this reduces the
patient's confidence in his ability to ward off aversive
environmental events.
At the
executive level, the loss of energy associated with depression leads to failure to carry out tasks and thus
to the accumulation of unfinished
business such as unanswered (and even unopened) letters; so
that increasing evidence of incompetence and failure surround the
depressed person and cannot but have a
further depressing effect. Moreover, neglect of self-care leads to a deterioration
of skin, hair and clothes so that to
look in the mirror is a depressing experience. Maruyama (1963) pointed out the possibility
of "mutual amplification....between loss of self-confidence and poor performance in a neurotic
person."
Even when
tasks are carried out, they may be done badly in depression. A mother is unable
to give constructive attention to her children but rather screams at them or even hits
them, and so feels herself to be a bad
mother; and being unable to
respond sexually to her husband she feels
herself to be a bad wife; and
these experiences of failure deepen her
depressed mood.
At the social
level, depression leads to isolation which for most people is depressing. If depressed people
avoided those who make them feel bad, such as enemies, the depression might
serve a homeostatic function in this
respect; but, on the contrary,
they avoid friends and relatives who would,
if they were permitted, cheer them up. Even if relatives are not avoided, the interaction may
not be therapeutic: "...patients
may use depressive
symptoms to elicit sympathy and care from their
families, which in turn
reinforces the maladaptive behaviour and
establishes a vicious circle" (Veiel & Kuhner, 1990).
Klerman
(1974) investigated the "communication of distress" function of
depression, postulating that it served as a cry for help which mobilised social resources. However, after studying a
group of 40 depressed women
and a matched control group he came to the conclusion that the
depression had alienated the women not
only from friends and relatives but even from
their husbands and children.
At the
therapeutic level, the depressed person tries to get himself out of the trough, even without the added
stimulus from friends to "pull
yourself together" or to "snap out of it." These efforts fail, and this failure enhances the depression.
Criticism of
a person because of their depressive symptoms is an additional positive feedback loop. The
criticism makes them more
depressed, which increases the symptoms, which increases the
criticism, and so on. A number of
symptoms may be targets for attack, paticularly in the case of a
depressed spouse. A husband may get angry because the house isn't cleaned properly. Some husbands
get angry at lack of sexual
response, others at weight loss or gain. Wives get angry with the
husband who
doesn't do jobs around the house, or leaves them half done.
In summary,
many authors have commented on the occurrence of positive
feedback loops in depression, such that a
lowering of mood causes changes in the
environment which in turn cause a further lowering of mood.
Depression associated with homeostasis
In view of the above considerations we might expect
every depressed patient to be
accelerating towards disaster, but in practice the majority of depressed patients, certainly most of those
seen in the out-patient clinic, seem to
be very chronic and appear to the clinician to be "stuck" rather than in a state of change. A man is depressed
in his job, but he lacks the
intitiative to apply for another
job; he is nervous about the
interview situation, and he dreads the
rejection of being turned down. As with a job, so with a marriage. A common
presentation in the out-patient clinic is the woman who is married to an
uncaring tyrant; her life is one of drudgery and service to a man who will give
her no pleasure and denies her the
opportunity of seeking pleasure elsewhere. These women are "stuck" in their marriages,
and the depression makes it impossible for them to leave. They lack the energy
and initiative to set up on their own, they lack the interest to look for an alternative
partner and the depression makes them
unattractive to any man who might come along.
The theorist
who has most clearly made the case for depression as an agent of stasis, if not of
homeostasis, is Costello (1976), who sees the
function of depression as maintaining the status quo. If mood is pervasive,
depression lowers all incentives equally, so that a failing incentive is less likely to be replaced by
another.
In the family
therapy literature, depression is seen as a factor blocking systemic change (Hoffman,
1981), partly by reducing problem- solving ability and partly by replacing
unstable symmetrical relationships
with stable "one-up/one-down"
relationships in which the one-down position
is associated with depressed mood (Haley, 1963).
Can negative feedback loops be identified?
Can we identify a negative feedback system maintaining
homeostasis of mood? Let us use the
analogy of body temperature, which is homeostatically maintained at a certain setting by
negative feedback such as sweating if
the temperature rises and shivering if the temperature falls. If mood is the equivalent of
temperature, what are the equivalents of sweating and shivering?
The most likely candidates are aversive and rewarding stimuli, since these are
known to lower and raise mood respectively. Where do these stimuli come from? The most likely sources are the people in the individual's
immediate environment. If we are dealing with stimuli from people, we can talk about signals
rather than stimuli, and postulate
"putting-down" signals for lowering mood, and
"boosting" signals for raising
mood.
What is then
being regulated is not actually mood but "apparent mood", or the mood of the
individual as it appears to those around him. Of the various manifestations of mood, it is the
degree of social control exercised by
the individual which most affects fellow group members; how
much does he allow others to control his actions, and how much does
he attempt to control the actions of
others? We must assume that the social group
allocates to each member an "exercise of control" setting which
is the level of control exercised by
that individual with which the group
feels comfortable, based, probably, on that individual's prestige in
the group. If the individual appears to
exercise too little control, the group increases its boosting signals and
reduces its putting-down signals to that
individual. If the individual appears to exercise too much control, he
is
perceived as "too big for his boots"
and the group stops boosting that
individual and starts putting him down.
For
simplicity, let us switch from the group to the dyad, and to that particular dyad in which there is a
one-up and a one-down member (Haley,
1963), such as a marital partnership in which the husband is one-up on
the wife. The one-up member defines the
relationship, including the "exercise of control" setting of the
one-down member. The husband then boosts his wife, or puts her down, so as to keep
her apparent exercise of control
identical to the "exercise of control" setting which he has
allocated to her. This setting is ideally
such as to ensure that the wife's mood is high enough to carry out her duties,
but not sufficiently high to threaten
his one-upness (it is our clinical experience
that such fine tuning requires more
social skill than many spouses possess).
What seems
more likely, from what we know clinically, is that the "one- up" husband
(or wife) tries to keep his spouse's exercise of control a constant amount below his own exercise
of control. What is maintained homeostatically
is not the absolute level of control but the difference in control between husband and wife, what might be
called the "control gap".
More
generally, the "one-up" spouse maintains a gap on what Birtchnell (1987) has
called the "vertical dimension" which describes a number of correlated variables such as mood, rank,
self-esteem, self-confidence, dominance,
and, in the last resort, the capacity to define the relationship rather than accept the definition provided by
the other. Colloquially, we might say he
tries to maintain a constant level of "one-upness"; more
technically he tries to maintain a constant vertical-gap setting
between what he feels to be his own postion on the vertical dimension and what he perceives his wife's to be. This
"gap" model has the advantage of
embracing the phenomena of redirected
aggression; if the husband's mood
is lowered after receiving punishment
from his boss at work, he restores the
vertical gap at home by putting his wife down
(or omitting to boost her). The feedback loop is probably below conscious
awareness: even though he may be aware that he is putting his wife
down, he does not understand why he is
doing it; and many signals intended as
boosting signals are received as
putting-down signals, especially in the case of "constructive"
criticism (MacLean, 1976).
This model is
the only homeostatic model I can find which could account for the static properties of many
depressions. It is clearly
oversimplistic, speculative and based
on unsystematic clinical observation. I have presented it to show that it is
possible to match the obvious
positive feedback loops governing mood with at least a possible
negative feedback system, suggesting
that the static depressions may represent true
homeostasis rather than just buffering or other mechanisms for
preventing change (Hogan, 1980). It is
noteworthy that the mood of one individual is determined by a "setting"
controlled by another. Returning to the analogy of body temperature, it is as if a
nurse were keeping her patient's
temperature at a constant amount below her own, sponging him when
the difference became too small, piling
on blankets when it became too great.
A RESOLUTION
OF THE PARADOX SUGGESTED FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF FUNCTION
Some depressions seem to be characterised by change in
the patient/environment
system, others by homeostasis. Does this mean there are two types of depression, or can
one depressive episode have both change
and homeostatic functions, either at the same time or
consecutively? Are there different levels of function, as
in the case of temperature control;
where, for example, a change in the activity of sweat glands can
mediate homeostasis of body temperature?
One possible
solution can be discerned if we develop Haley's idea,
mentioned above, that depression is associated
with the one-down position in an
important relationship. If we go a little further and say that the function of
depression is to reconcile the individual to the one-down position, then we can see that this
reconciliation may in some cases be
concerned with homeostasis and at other times with change. If the individual was formerly in the one-down
position, all that is required is that
he or she should be reconciled to remain in that position in spite of whatever new circumstances might be tending
to promote change. If, on the
other hand, the individual was formerly in the one-up position in
the relationship, there must be change
in the form of a reversal of dominance
in the relationship. In that case we might expect the depression to show change
characteristics while the reversal was taking place, and then possibly to stabilise into a homeostatic
depression if further reconciliation to
the one-down position were required.
This solution
accounts for the similarities of all depressions, in that they all have the same function of reconciliation
to the one-down position; and it
accounts for some of the differences between depressions, in that there are two different starting-off points.
This will be considered
further in the section on the classification of depression. The mental state of
depressed patients tends to be characterised by what Gilbert (1989) has called "involuntary
subordinate self perception", and might have been specifically designed by evolution for
the purpose of accommodating them to the
subordinate role, and other features such as apathy, hopelessness and anxiety might have been
designed to inhibit any attempts to
escape from it and gain or regain the one-up position.
The end-point and other changes
In the last section I suggested that the end-point of
a "change" depression is a reversal of dominance in the
relationship. One of the concomitants of this is passivity and compliance on
the part of the newly depressed
individual. This may or may not lead to secondary change in matters which were in
conflict. Say, for instance, that a subordinate wife wants to move house, but her
dominant husband refuses. After some marital conflict, the dominance relations are reversed, the
husband becomes depressed, and the wife
gets her own way. The move of house is secondary change, dependent on the reversal of
dominance. However, the move of house may appear to be the end-point, as this was the wife's
objective in the struggle, and when it is
achieved she no longer nags the husband. If it is the husband who wants
to move house, then the end-point for
the wife is not "moving house" but "not moving house", in other words, the
absence of secondary change (except in
the form of a change in aspiration on the part of the husband, in that
he gives up the idea of moving house).
The primary change is not the move of house, but who decides whether or not
they move house.
Another form
of secondary change may be part of the positive feedback process of the "change"
depression. Suppose in the above example that the husband loses his job. This change was
not the end-point desired by the wife, but it deprives the husband of
standing in the family and facilitates
the reversal of dominance, leading eventually to the desired change.
OBJECTIONS TO THE HYPOTHESIS
Why are some subordinates not depressed?
Depression is only one of a number of mechanisms for facilitating subordination
during the course of dyadic interaction. Therefore all subordinate individuals are not
depressed. Children tend to be subordinate to their parents without the need for
depression, and in general if there is a
great difference in size or age or skill between two individuals, one may automatically adopt a subordinate role
without any suggestion of
depression; in fact, there may be
joyous surrender to one whom the
subordinate individual respects or even adulates. Depression is likely to be a "safety
net" mechanism to ensure asymmetry when other methods of negotiation have failed. It is likely to
occur when rank is contested, or when extra demands are made on the
subordinate member - demands which in
the absence of depression might incite them to rebellion.
Why does depression occur after loss?
The dyadic interaction of agonistic behaviour is the
main vertebrate
mechanism for inducing social asymmetry, but in human beings it
has been superceded
to a large extent by other forms of social competition. In human social life, asymmetry is often
imposed on members of a dyad from
outside, in two rather different ways. Dominant rank may depend on a patron who favours
one member at the expense of the other, so that rank reversal may occur if a patron is lost. This
may lead to a "change" depression in the member who loses
rank; whereas if the subordinate
member loses a patron the subordinate
rank would be intensified and a "static" depression could be expected. Also, as
Gilbert (1989) has pointed out, instead of displaying their power to
each other in an attempt to intimidate
the other, two rivals may present themselves as attractive to the group
as a whole in an attempt to solicit
approbation, which may lead to differences
of prestige and self-esteem. Possibly this evolutionarily new form of
social competition has been built on the
mechanisms of dyadic agonistic behaviour,
so that a change depression may occur in someone who loses the approbation of the group, whereas a static
depression occurs in someone who has
never had the approbation of the group. In human social life, subordination is induced by agonistic behaviour
only in settings in which society has
neither the will nor the power to intervene, such as the street-corner gang, the school playground and
the nuclear family; therefore it is
only in these settings that we are likely to see depression resulting directly from dyadic interaction.
Which relationship?
To the suggestion that the function of depression is
concerned with the issue of being
one-down in the relationship, it might be argued that human beings have many relationships, so how do we
know which one is liable to generate the
kind of dyadic interaction which might lead to depression?
Clinically,
we find that a depressed person is usually having problems with one relationship, and it may be a
spouse, a parent, a child, a sibling, an
employer, or some other person who is important to the patient.
Over hundreds
of millions of years of our evolution, we probably lived in groups with a fairly linear dominance
hierarchy, like present day baboons and
macaques (Barkow, 1975) in which all dyadic
relationships are complementary in terms
of power. In these monkey societies there are only two relationships that are likely to
be contested, one with whoever ranks
below and the other with whoever ranks above. If there is difficulty
with the monkey who ranks below, this
becomes the priority relationship, and
that with the monkey above is likely to be put on "hold" (in
the form of submission) while the first
is being sorted out. Therefore our minds have evolved to "take on" only
one rival at a time.
IMPLICATIONS FOR THE CLASSIFICATION OF DEPRESSION
How does this hypothesis relate to the idea of two
types of depression? The depression of
a one-up person becoming a one-down person is likely to be more severe than that of a one-down
person remaining one-down, and onlookers
are more likely to comment on change in behaviour or attitude, but since the objective of the depression is
the same in the two cases (adjustment to
the one-down position) one would expect the depressions to be quite similar. This fits with the
distinction between "neurotic" and "endogenous" depression
(Price, 1969). The difference between the two depressions is a difference in
starting-point rather than of content.
Beck's (1976)
negative cognitive triad (about the self, the world and the future) is appropriate to both types of
depression, in that such thinking
disposes the sufferer to accept whatever has been imposed on him without attempting rebellion. But a negative
view of the past is appropriate to a
change depression, in which thinking should take such forms as "my former rank was
inappropriate" and "my former successes were all a sham", with which, indeed, the
clinician is familiar in his
psychotically depressed patients. Such thinking need not occur in the static
depressions because there never has been any previous success or high rank to form the subject of cognitive
distortion.
Possibly the
view of neurotic and endogenous depressions as having homeostatic and change functions, respectively,
may help researchers to separate the two
clinically. For instance, rating scales attempting to separate the two depressions might
well concentrate on the statements of
informants, who notice a change from previous personality in patients
with endogenous depression, but
concerning patients with neurotic depression
tend towards the view that "he is much the same as he has always
been, only
rather more so".
IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCH
Evolutionary hypotheses are not directly testable, and
so it is important for
them to be heuristic and to provide a novel conceptual scheme from which refutable hypotheses can be generated.
This applies to the idea that
depression evolved because it served the function of enabling our
ancestors to adopt subordinate social
roles. The possible homology between human depression and animal defeat reactions
offers some promising animal models
(Henry, 1982; Leshner, 1983; McGuire, 1988; Sapolsky, 1989; Price, 1989).
In human
beings, the hypothesis orients us to the psychology of complementary relationships. Bateson (1972), Sluzki and Beavin (1977), Hinde (1979)
and the "interpersonal" psychologists (Orford,
1986) have given serious consideration
to the topic, but more research is needed. We need to develop measuring instruments
which will give reliable measures of
consistent asymmetry in relationships, so far not achieved (Gray-Little
& Burks, 1983).
With
instruments to measure complementarity and the expression of both boosting and putting-down signals
between the members of a dyad, we would
be in a position to make predictions from the theory: for instance that, in complementary marriages, the onset of
depression in the one-up partner (but
not in the one-down partner) would be associated with an increase in aversive signalling (expressed hostility) to
the spouse. A preliminary
study gave some evidence for this (Price, 1988) but a far more
rigorous study is required. Previous
work on the expression of hostility in depression has not taken account of
complementarity between the patient and
the object of the hostility, and it is possible that the neglect of this variable has been responsible for the conflicting
findings which have resulted from such
studies (Riley et al., 1989).
RELATION TO OTHER THEORIES
The "change" depressions postulated here are
consistent with the
"disengagement from incentives" theory of depression
put forward by Klinger (1975), in that
they function to disengage the patient from a desirable social role which is no longer tenable. The
"static" depressions are consistent with the learned
helplessness theory of depression put forward
by Seligman (1975), in that they discourage the patient from resisting
the aversive stimulation which may pass
down a social hierarchy, and thus serve
the function of maintaining the stability of the complementary relationships which constitute a social
hierarchy.
We can also
attempt to integrate this phylogenetic view with interpersonal
psychology. Birtchnell (1987) has called the vertical dimension of the interpersonal circle directiveness/receptiveness or upperness/lowerness.
According to our theory, a "change" depression serves the function of moving an individual
down the vertical dimension from upperness to lowerness; a "static" depression serves to
maintain an individual in a position of lowerness. The horizontal dimension of closeness/distance is clearly
uncorrelated with these functions, as one can
have one's place usurped as readily by a stranger as by one's brother.
However, at least one other dimension is required to fit the model with reality, as we
know that states of lowerness may be either welcome
or unwelcome, and this dimension is
important for the affective states of the
actors concerned. A position of lowerness may
be adopted willingly, even
joyfully, when the position of upperness
is occupied by someone who is respected
or loved, and from whom security and praise may be forthcoming; this position of lowerness
is complementary to the "idealised other" of Kohut or the "hero archetype" of
Jung (Gilbert, 1991). On the other hand,
if the upper individual is resented rather
than respected, the lower person
has been coerced into lowerness
and is likely to be tempted to rebellion;
it is in preventing this rebellion that depression serves its function.
This
variation between joyful and resentful lowerness is,
I think, best
expressed by Chance's concept of hedonic and agonic modes
(Chance, 1988), because in the hedonic
mode status relationships are not an issue whereas in the agonic mode the actors are oriented
towards contesting status relationships
with agonistic behaviour. In describing relationships, we may think of upperness/lowerness
(or, more correctly, symmetry/com- plementarity) and closeness/distance as trait variables
whereas hedonic/agonic is a state
variable which reflects the degree to which the
actors are currently satisfied with the existing status relationships.
Although some loving or hero-worshipping relationships may be very stable over long periods, others may switch rapidly
from hedonic to agonic and back again in
processes of dissuagement (Heard and Lake, 1986)
and reconciliation (de Waal, 1989), and
this is typically seen in marital
relationships. There are two exit routes from agonic lowerness (depression): one climbs towards upperness
(or symmetry), the other is a switch to
hedonic lowerness (implying that the lowerness and its
implications are accepted)..
CONCLUSIONS
The theoretical arguments presented here support the
long-held view that
there are two distinct types of human depression. One type serves
a static function; namely, to maintain the one-down member of a
relationship in that position in spite
of motivation to become one-up and in spite of
demanding and provocative behaviour by the one-up member. The other type serves a change
function; namely, to facilitate the
change of the one-up member in a
relationship into the one-down position, in spite of motivation
to remain one-up. To some extent, both
types of depression serve the same function; namely, to reconcile the one-down member of a
relationship to what is likely to be an
uncomfortable and unrewarding social role. They differ in their point of origin, in
that one is helping the actor to remain
where he has been, whereas the other is helping him to change from
his former one-up position.
This
hypothesis is consistent with ethologically-based theories which see depression as an evolved mechanism
concerned with the maintenance of
asymmetry in relationships. The capacity to live harmoniously in equal, symmetrical,
reciprocal relationships with others is rare among vertebrates. In almost all species, two
same-sexed adults sharing a
territory develop an asymmetrical relationship, whereby one is
dominant and the other subordinate. The
subordinate animal needs to lead a life of considerable inhibition in many
activities, such as feeding, mating,
exploration and freedom of movement;
in fact, it needs to have a different
mentality or behavioural style from the dominant animal. We could call this the
subordinate mentality. Because animal social life depends for its success on the
development and maintenance of a subordinate mentality in a considerable proportion of any population, it
is likely that several mechanisms have
evolved for inducing subordination. It has been suggested by a number of writers that human
depression is a manifestation of one of
these subordination-inducing mechanisms (Price, 1967; Gardner, 1982
and 1988; Hartung,
1987; Gilbert, 1989 and 1991; Sloman et al., 1989). The depression is part of a system of
dyadic interaction which ensures the
development and maintenance of asymmetry.
Regarding prophylaxis
and therapy, depression is seen as a primitive, involuntary means of resolving
interpersonal conflict. The necessity for
it can be avoided if negotiation can
produce a compromise solution based on
reciprocity and interpersonal equality;
or, if yielding by one party is
unavoidable, voluntary yielding can replace the
involuntary yielding of depression. In
this sense, the experience of depression contains the seeds of its own resolution by inducing a
state of "giving in and giving up". The therapist can facilitate this
process by assisting the patient to give up unequal struggles, unrealisable
goals and unachievable aspirations.
Human social
life is very different from the social organisation in which depressive states are likely to
have evolved. The social hierarchies based on intimidation have given way
largely to status systems based on the
display of attractiveness and the voluntary conferral of power. Even beyond this, for
many people the experience of winning or losing has become an inner symbolic one, detached from the
realities of the social situation they
are in. As Longfellow said:
Not in the clamour of the crowded street,
Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng,
But in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.
However, nature is a tinkerer rather than an engineer,
and it is likely that
the mechnisms subserving these advanced forms of
triumph and defeat have been built onto
the foundations of the old ones, so that they may still trigger affective states which were
functional in relation to the primitive
hierarchies. And these primitive hierarchies may even now be discerned in places where cultural
influences are not pronounced, such as
street gangs, school playgrounds and the matrimonial home. In these situations we
can actually see depression facilitating reversal of rank or the maintenance of low rank, and in such
cases the systemic properties of change
and stasis are of functional importance.
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